Deep Sea hydrothermal vent habitats support gravid Antarctic krill
Kim S Bernard, Angelo F Bernardino, Kristen N Buck, Salvatore Caprara, R Ben Freiberger, Elizabeth Hogan, Rachel L Kaplan, Aaron Micallef, Laura E Moore, Sarah Seabrook, Andrew R Thurber · 2026
Read Deep Sea hydrothermal vent habitats support gravid Antarctic krill by Kim S Bernard, Angelo F Bernardino, Kristen N Buck, Salvatore Caprara, R Ben Freiberger, Elizabeth Hogan, Rachel L Kaplan, Aaron Micallef, Laura E Moore, Sarah Seabrook, Andrew R Thurber (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13575242.txt.
Description
Bernard and co-authors present a 2026 study showing that pregnant Antarctic krill use deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Krill anchor the Southern Ocean food web, yet fishing and warming squeeze them. Females caught at a vent field in the Bransfield Strait carried mating plugs. Their tissue chemistry, gut microbes, and metal traces all pointed to meals of vent-grown microbes.
Camera footage from a second vent site, in the Scotia Arc, backed the pattern. Breeding females thus seek vents, a habitat role no one had credited before. The authors urge planners to fold vent regions into marine protected areas. Safeguarding krill nurseries may hinge on these hot, dark refuges.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Kim S Bernard, Angelo F Bernardino, Kristen N Buck, Salvatore Caprara, R Ben Freiberger, Elizabeth Hogan, Rachel L Kaplan, Aaron Micallef, Laura E Moore, Sarah Seabrook, Andrew R Thurber |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 36 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |